ABSTRACT In this article, I addres...

ABSTRACT

In this article, I address the "balkanization argument" made by dint of conservatives for English-Only legislation and against bilingualism. The argument here is that the United States faces the sort of linguistic divisions lay the foundation of in other countries. Most often invoked are the cases of Canada and Belgium. The claim that the United States should take warning from these countries and avoid the promotion of bilingualism has been made at a number ofpeople, including Linda Chavez, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr and salamander Gingrich. I argue that this claim is alarmist, at best. Data from Canada and Belgium indicate that the linguistic situations in these brace countries are far too different to make reasonable comparisons to the United States. I make my case according to using data of language shift language demographics, and language prestige. These data indicate just for what reason far the United States is from being upon the same road toward linguistic division. This is not to say, however, that linguistic division cannot come into view and I point out the rebukes we should draw from the cases of Canada, Belgium, and other multilingual nations.

The real fear of Americans is that Hispanics will individual day be a group large and powerful enough to insist that the U adopt a bilingual policy. That fear is not to such a degree far-fetched, as Canada's example demonstrates. French-Canadians make up solely about one-quarter of the Canadian population, still they have succeeded in forcing the entire rural parts to recognize and use French as an official language. Will something similar happen with Spanish when nearly one-third of the U population is Hispanic? The entire possibility drives some Americans to make confident that day does not follow (Chavez, 1991, pp. 88-89)1

BALKANIZATION AND BILINGUALISM

In the above quotation, Linda Chavez encapsulates the alarmist answer to the increased immigration from Spanish-speaking countries that began in the mid-1980's. The primary rejoinder was the Official-English movement. Supporters of this mental action argued that "[f]ailure to [make English our official language] may well lead to institutionalized language segregation and a gradual los of national unity" (U English, 1992 p 144) In 1984 S.I. Hayakawa claimed that "[f]or the first time in our history, our nation is faced with the possibility of the kind of linguistic division that has tom apart Canada in latter years; that has been a major feature of the unhappy history of Belgium, split into speakers of French and Flemish; that is at this excessively moment a bloody division between the Sinhalese and Tamil populations of Sri Lanka" (Hayakawa, 1992p99) More lately Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama reiterated these beliefs claiming "[w]hat we're (U English] really trying to do is thwart the balkanization of this abiding habitation down the road . just as sure as life, if we have more and more diversity in this home without the English language unifying us, we're going to have disarrange and we're going to have splits."2 This is because, claims Schlesinger ( 1992) bilingualism will corrode our national unity. For bilingualism is just another part of what Schlesinger abusively calls the "cult of ethnicity."3

The primary assertion in the rhetoric above is that countries, in which the direction recognizes in some official way languages other than the national or primary language, fall apart, i.e. they "balkanize."

Certainly the situations in Canada and Belgium--the pair nation-states that are used mostly frequently in the balkanization argument--are serious. However, they hardly qualify as the "clear warning to Americans about the threat that bilingualism bewilders to unity in the United States" as eft Gingrich claimed in regard to Canada (The Denver situation 1995, p. Al). In this article, I make sum of two units basic arguments. First, Gingrich and others grossly exaggerate the comparability of the linguistic state of affairs in the United States and these other nation-states. secondary the purported connection between bilingualism and balkanization ignores as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but counter-examples of peaceful bilingual nationstates and other potential causes of national division.

As a point of departure for my first argument, I review Lawrence Fuchs' plenteous earlier take on the question of comparing the United States and Canada. I chase this with descriptions of the linguistic situations in the one and the other Canada and Belgium and then point abroad the major differences between the situation of language minorities in these pair countries and those in the United States.

STRETCHING COMPARISONS: PART single

Some years ago, Lawrence Fuch (1983) addressed the issue of making comparisons between the linguistic situations in Canada and the U Given the make anxious about the numbers of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, especially Mexico, Fuch not past nor futureed five major differences between Mexican Americans and French-Canadians.

Fuchs' first point was common specifically related to language. He argued that Mexican American leaders, while arguing in favor of civilization and language maintenance, have not ever made arguments in opposition to the acquisition of English.